A Shard of Glass
by AubreyWitch
Summary: Various themed Inuyasha drabbles to be added at random.
1. Lucky

**Theme: Lucky  
Word Count: 131  
Rating: PG-13  
Summary: Can one really cheat death?**

He sits in the tree and watches her. And he knows that she loves him. She is his everything, though he has tried to forget this. He cannot return her love; he has an obligation.

She is life and Kikyou death, and he loves them both the same.

Now he watches her face, shining like the sun as she laughs. Yes, she radiates. He thinks he must be lucky to have loved twice, more so to be alive. Yet there was honor in his death for Kikyou. What honor is there now?

When he wakes from dreams of his death she is there, waiting at the base of the tree. And his soul weeps in her embrace.

She is life. And he wants her, but he is already marked by death.


	2. Miroku

**Theme: Miroku  
Word Count: 185  
Rating: PG  
Summary: He knows her so well.**

Miroku.

The name rests on her lips but remains unspoken. Instead she calls to him, "Houshi-sama."

She thinks of all the times she has nearly lost him. It makes her throat tight, but he turns to her with smiling eyes.

"Yes, Sango?"

She has nothing to say, and for a moment allows her eyes to linger on his handsome face. She knows the depths of his indigo eyes and the emotions that they so often hide.

"It looks as if it will rain." She wants only his attention.

His smile widens to a grin, bringing joy to those dark eyes. "My dearest Sango, if you wish for my attention, you need but ask it."

"Houshi-sama." The name serves as her only warning as his hand glides down the curve of her back, and he knows in her tone there is the promise of pain.

He recoils and sheepishly rubs his head, unable to suppress his nervous laughter. "Yes, well, perhaps we should seek some shelter then?"

He turns his back to her then in order to retreat, and she smiles. He knows her so well.


	3. Opposites

**Theme: Opposites  
Word Count: 143  
Rating: PG-13  
Summary: Kikyou is both life and death.**

She smelled of rain kissed roses, springtime and youth. Like her scent, his love was an ever unfolding blossom, and within delicate petals its depth grew. She was beauty and justice and in him breathed life. She offered healing and growth, and so he held her and breathed her in, content to be alive.

How far away her spring seems now.

She is the walking winter, cold and barren. And though she has been given a second life, she is harsh and fueled by hatred. She smells strongly of burial soil; it assaults his senses leaving him confused and frightened. She looks so familiar but is so different now. Still, he wishes to hold her, though she is frozen and unrelenting. She is her own death and now seeks his own.

How opposite that is to him when she once was his life.


	4. Dreams

**Theme: Dreams  
Word Count: 296  
Rating: PG  
Summary: All that he wants.**

He is sleeping again.

He knows this because she is smiling at him. He watches himself, grinning back at her as if he has never known heartache. He looks a fool but does not care; for once he feels light hearted.

Her shinidamachuu aren't here this time.

She stands alone in the clearing, the darkness like a veil to her pale skin. When she speaks, the words are striking in the silence, directing his gaze to her budding lips, "I am the sound of love's arriving."

He moves to her, drawn by her voice. His eyes search her body in growing need. She is stunning. "Lay your head upon my shoulder, lay your hand upon my hand," his words are passionate, pleading.

She speaks the words he longs to hear, and his heart beats at her command. "I'll give you all that I am."

He is hers; he can feel her hold on him. He is bound like a beautiful prey in her spell. "I breathe where you breathe. Let me stay where you stand. I love you with all that I am."

She smiles and tilts her head. She allows him to embrace her, his body bumping roughly against hers as if he has no choice but to be pulled to her, to connect with her. He wants nothing else. And his lips touch her delicate neck.

He whispers against her skin, "I would give my life to save you."

And she replies, "I'll show you all that I am."

When he wakes he is entangled in another's arms. Her hair is soft against his skin, and he cuddles her closer. He feels guilty in his silent betrayal against _this_ love.

But every day that he is alive he misses her.


	5. Rosary

**Theme: Gift  
Word Count: 217  
Rating: PG  
Summary: An unlikely gift.**

When he picks dirt from his teeth and curses heavily the black beads around his neck, he does not realized it is _her_ gift.

Instead, he blames Kagome, not because she made it or placed it upon his neck, but because it is hers–because it makes him hers. And through it she uses him as she sees fit.

When he endures the pain of impact and cries out in humiliation, he does not think where _they_ would be had it not been placed around his neck to save her life, had it not stopped him when he was berserk, had it not prevented him from so many things he would have done otherwise.

It has saved his life and taken it. But he is never thankful.

Until the day that it is broken.

He collects the beads, carefully one by one, and re-strings the necklace. Each bead tells a story: of his sorrow, of his life, of his love and death–of his devotion. When she sees it once more upon his neck, she is unmoving and does not speak. The spell is broken, but there it remains.

She does not ask why, and he does not answer. Instead, she takes his hand and smiles in relief.

It is their connection and precious to each other.


	6. Rouge

**Theme:** **Gift**  
**Word Count: 250**  
**Rating:** **PG-13**  
**Summary:** **It was the first glimpse into a normal life--one that now stained her fingertips but remained just beyond her grasp.**

It was a dark gleam, a glimmer, a mere sliver of hope. And it was the best gift she had ever received.

Her wide eyes sparkled in the candlelight as the tiny flames cast shadows over her smooth, pale skin. There was a fire burning inside her now, trying to smoulder its way past her lips. It licked at her throat, and she fought the urge to throw her head back and laugh carnally alone in the darkness.

That would be unbecoming of a priestess.

Instead she sat there quietly, heart pounding at the image before her–this unfamiliar image of herself. Was this what joy felt like or was it something darker, more sinister still. Delicate fingers reached out to caress the smooth surface of the mirror, before retracting to her mauve lips in fascination.

At the sound of footsteps, she hastily smeared the rouge from her skin. "Kaede," she scolded but left her sentence unspoken. The child looked at her with innocent but knowing eyes, and she forced a smile, for her sake, and turned away from the mirror.

The precious item was already hidden within her folds.

It didn't matter now. In that one glimpse she had seen farther into her soul than she could have in years of meditation. And she knew in that instant that, yes, she could go through with this. She could be something less than herself, yet more desirable ten times fold.

She could be normal. And she would be happy. Tomorrow.


	7. Jewel

**Theme: Midoriko  
Word Count: 181  
Rating: PG-13  
Summary: Miroku struggles with the reason she died.  
**

Sometimes he wishes to turn his hand upon himself and stare into the depths of his own nothingness. He likens it to standing at the peak of a mountain and to have the wind rush around him like a whispering in his head.

Jump.

Would it feel of glorious flight as his body rushed toward the ground, arms spread wide open? He clenches his fist around the prayer beads, feeling determined not to give in.

Not yet, I want to live.

Sometimes Sango speaks of this–of the greatest of her kin who fell because they wanted to. Because they were tried of fighting and had grown tired of life. They were killed because they allowed themselves to die. He wonders if Sango fights her own demons that whisper in her ear that death would be so much easier now.

He would ask Midoriko, was it worth it? Is that why you changed your mind? But he is afraid of the answer she would give him and because of it keeps his distance from the jewel.

He's not ready to know yet.


	8. Resolution

**Theme: Resolutions  
Word Count: 531  
Rating: PG-13  
Summary: Kagome will never again land at the bottom of that well.  
**_  
_

_Don't let them know it hurts. Don't let them see the decay inside._

She falls back onto the sweat drenched sheets, heart pounding in her chest. She's panting openly, head thrown back, legs spread wide.

_Inuyasha._

Even after all these years, his name comes first in her mind, the first touch of reality to draw her from the chasm of nothingness. It saves her each time she threatens to fall over–no, to leapt over–and disappear forever after spilling over her own swell of pleasure. But the man that falls gasping to her breasts, smothering her body with his own is someone else. Always someone else.

_Inuyasha._

She never experienced the touch of his body and yet she knows he would have been the best. So she settles for what must be second best but is mostly mediocre. After all, an imitation like her could never experience the best. The irony threatens to choke her. At least she gets what she deserves. Suddenly she is all too dry and wants nothing more than to clean up, to scald her traitorous skin and wash away his memories.

That's right, he's dead to her now, confined to dreams and fleeting memories. Forever lost to the sands of time, each passing second another granule in the growing desert that separates them. All of them. Sometimes she weeps for them, but if she is honest with herself, she knows that she hasn't in years. She weeps only for him; only for the one who doesn't deserve it.

_Inuyasha._

She clenches her fists, dropping to her knees in the shower. Now she will have bruises, but she doesn't care. Somehow, they feel familiar.

He never came for her. It was then that she stopped believing in fairy tales, stopped pretending that such a thing as a happy ending could exist. It was then that she abandoned the little girl inside of her. Time to put childish things away.

She feels her fingernails scrape the hard plastic of the shower floor. How did she end up like this? Houjou opens the shower curtain then. "Are you okay?"

His gentle eyes are always full of concern, and she can't bear to tell him the truth. He wouldn't understand. He wouldn't believe. She looks up at him slowly, head tilted to the side, water running down her face in rivulets. "I dropped the soap."

He smiles, face bright and innocent. But she had seen that face darken with need. "Do I need to help you?"

He is joking, and she struggles to smile. "No."

He was the one who found her that day, crying in the well. She hates that well. She remembers the time she tried to burn it to the ground.

_Inuyasha!_

It's been years since she flung herself over the lip of the well, night after night, willing the darkness to swallow her whole, skinned knees, bruised palms and a broken heart causing her to eventually give up.

But she will never again land at the bottom of that well. She made that resolution long ago.


	9. Mirror

**Theme:** **Mirror**  
**Word Count: 250**  
**Rating:** **PG-13**  
**Summary: Kagome's found that she doesn't look in mirrors anymore.**

Kagome glances at the image of dark eyes and dark hair before absently brushing back an unruly lock. Turning away from the mirror, she smiles.

"Goodbye, mama," she calls, headed for the door.

"Have a good day at school, dear, and be careful," comes the answer from the living room, but the girl is already gone. Her mother sighs and returns her attention to the partially folded laundry in her lap. She reaches for the remote as she moves on to one of Souta's many t-shirts and sighs happily as she settles on her favorite morning talk show.

"Souta!" Kagome calls irritably at her delay. "What are you doing in the well-house?" She worries her lip over the possibility of being late.

"The cat's in there."

His eyes are wide as he peers down the steps, and she finds herself flopping down into the darkness in annoyance.

The last thing she remembers is screaming. And then she finds herself in _that_ place.

She's found that she doesn't look in mirrors anymore. Perhaps she fallen out of the habit due to their rarity in her time spent there. But mostly she suspects that it's a subconscious avoidance of own visage. She knows that she must look haggard—a thin and fatigued version of herself, but that isn't why.

Now when she happens to catch a glimpse of her reflection, she is met with the face of a long dead priestess masquerading as a schoolgirl. And those realities just don't mix anymore.


	10. His Girl

**Theme:** **Truth**  
**Word Count:** **195**  
**Rating:** **PG-13**  
**Summary:** **His girl is her but not her.**

When she wakes from death he has already chosen another.

The bitterness is consuming. As if murder wasn't enough to endure. As if his survival isn't enough to bear. Now she is faced with his happiness.

She might laugh from the irony if she wasn't already weeping. The girl—his girl—is her but not her, a better her full of innocence and naiveté and life. And so she hates them both.

But that doesn't change the fact that she's alone now. Days stretch into nights stretch into memories, and he comes to her with empty confessions.

She doesn't even know what the truth is anymore. Apparently he loved her then. But she can't wipe those blood stained claws from her memory. And when she touches the smooth skin of her shoulder, she can't forgive him for moving on without her.

In the end she has discovered that hate is somehow more painful than betrayal's bitter emptiness.

It was never supposed to end this way.

But she had expected it from the moment of their first kiss. She tasted the tragedy on his lips. And now there is nothing left to want except his death.


	11. Death Blow

**Theme: Death Blow  
Word Count: 285  
Rating: PG-13  
Summary: A fate worse than death.**

When Inuyasha felt metal and then wood force its way through skin to pierce muscle, bone and finally his own racing heart in that one searing moment, the last thing he expected to feel was relief. He had expected more of the same emotions since that morning: betrayal, hurt, anger. He felt all of those things and something more inexplicable. Finally, after all these months she had executed the move she should have from the moment they first met. _Of course it was too good to be true. _Really she had only shown him that he had been right all along. But somehow, he thought maybe he still loved her.

_Doomed._

And then he felt his soul fade into immense white light or endless darkness; he couldn't decide. Just as in life, how he had neither been wholly human nor demon, he found a mixture waiting for him called death. As the gray washed over him, encompassing him like a tangible mist, he felt his body set as if slowly turned to stone in the process, the muscles suddenly straining painfully, fruitlessly under immobile skin. He felt panicked, helpless to so much as flutter his eyelids and unwilling still to give in.

_Time doesn't exist here._

It could have been seconds or an eternity. All that mattered was the present—this struggle that he could never hope to win. And then later he learned the truth: he had been in agony for 50 years before she rescued him.

Kagome asked him once if he had dreamed at all during that time. He didn't have the heart to tell her what it was really like. Or maybe he couldn't face what Kikyou had done to him, meant for him knowingly with that final blow. A fate worse than death.

"I don't remember."


End file.
